Influence of changes to the runtime environment on Android applications
The programming interface of Android offers a variety of features and information sources to create applications. However, these information sources also make it possible to create a fingerprint of a device. However, applications do not always need access to all the information provided. One approach for making it more difficult to create a fingerprint is to deactivate certain information sources by making changes to the runtime environment or to standardize their return values across as many devices as possible. This report examines the influence of such changes to the runtime environment on applications on Android. For this purpose, tests are carried out using a tool that automatically triggers user input while the applications to be tested are running. Using this approach, the changes to the runtime environment are examined with the 120 most popular applications from the Google Play Store. The tests showed that the majority of the tested applications continue to run. However, changes to methods that are relevant to the user interface can result in minor visual differences.
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Project Report (DE)
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